The administration of US President Donald Trump on Friday urged Americans to cover their faces in public and limited exports of medical supplies, while New York Governor Andrew Cuomo vowed to seize unused ventilators from private hospitals and companies.
Trump announced new guidelines that call for everyone to wear makeshift face coverings such as T-shirts or bandannas when leaving the house, especially in areas hit hard by the pandemic, such as New York.
The advice from the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) was “a recommendation, they recommend it,” Trump told reporters, but added: “I just don’t want to wear one myself.”
Photo: Reuters
The change came amid concerns from health officials that people without symptoms can spread the virus.
Officials said that medical-grade masks should be reserved for health workers and others on the front lines of the pandemic, with critical equipment in short supply.
In one of the most aggressive steps yet in the US to relieve shortages of equipment, Cuomo said he would sign an executive order to take ventilators that are not being used.
Photo: AP
“If they want to sue me for borrowing their excess ventilators to save lives, let them sue me,” Cuomo said.
He promised to eventually return the equipment or compensate the owners.
The governor was praised by a hospital association for moving to seize extra ventilators, but officials outside New York City objected.
“Taking our ventilators by force leaves our people without protection and our hospitals unable to save lives today or respond to a coming surge,” 12 of them said in a statement.
Cuomo said that New York, the nation’s worst hot spot, could run out of ventilators next week.
Shortages of such things as masks, gowns and ventilators have led to fierce competition among buyers from Europe, the US and elsewhere.
Trump said he was preventing the export of N95 respirator masks and surgical gloves under the US Defense Production Act, a move he said was necessary to ensure that medical supplies are available in the US.
Friday’s announcement capped an “evolution” in guidance from the White House.
“I want to unpack the evolution of our guidance on masks, because it has been confusing to the American people,” US Surgeon General Jerome Adams said.
Although and he other public health experts initially believed that wearing a mask would not have a substantial impact on curbing the spread, the latest evidence makes clear that people who do not show any symptoms can nonetheless pass on the virus, Adams said, adding that masks were always recommended for people who showed symptoms.
“We’re looking at the data, we’re evolving our recommendations, and new recommendations will come as the evidence dictates,” he said.
The White House task force was debating earlier on Friday on the final language of the guidance.
US CDC scientists wanted to make it national guidance, believing that would do more to slow the spread of the virus, while White House advisers, including Deborah Birx, wanted to limit the guidance to virus hot spots.
Birx said on Thursday that she feared wider guidance would lead to a false sense of security for Americans and cause them to back away from more critical social distancing.
In the end, they found a middle ground: A national advisory with special emphasis that those in hard-hit areas should wear masks.
Two people familiar with the discussions outlined the internal debate, speaking on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to describe it publicly.
Michael Ryan, executive director of the WHO’s Health Emergencies Programme, on Friday said it was a “very important and very healthy debate” about how surgical masks and other face coverings are used.
“We still believe the main driver of this pandemic is symptomatic” transmission, not people who might be infected but are not showing symptoms, Ryan said.
“We can certainly see circumstances in which the use of masks — but homemade or cloth masks — at the community level may help in an overall comprehensive response to this disease,” Ryan said.
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